FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT EBAY AUCTION - PAGE 3

Four advance copies of Alice Randall's "The Wind Done Gone" were pulled Wednesday from the Internet auction site eBay after bidding reached $485 for one copy. U.S. District Judge Charles Pannell blocked publication of the book last week, ruling Randall's work constituted "piracy" of Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With the Wind" and could not be published. A lawyer for the Margaret Mitchell Trust said he asked eBay to remove the books. "My fear is that the whole book is going to end up published on the Internet," he said.

A Wheeling man was sentenced to 33 months in prison Friday in federal court for bilking eBay customers out of about $165,000 by falsely advertising hundreds of videotapes and DVDs for auction. Barry J. Reiger, 44, was ordered to pay full restitution to the more than 3,000 victims by U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow, Assistant U.S. Atty. Eric Sussman said. When Reiger pleaded guilty to mail fraud in October, authorities said he had legitimately sold thousands of videotapes and DVDs through online auctions on eBay for about five years.

A federal indictment made public Friday charges a suburban man and woman with defrauding hundreds of consumers by offering merchandise on Internet auction sites and failing to deliver any goods. James D. Thompson, 29, and Susan B. Germek, 24, both of Justice, were sued in April by the Federal Trade Commission. A federal judge ordered their assets frozen at the time. The 13-count indictment charges that Thompson and Germek, using aliases, pocketed more than $80,000 by falsely advertising computers, software, designer handbags and electronic equipment for sale on eBay and Yahoo auctions.

One Manhattan apartment, six interior designers, an eBay auction budget and eight weeks to decorate. Sound like the newest reality designing show? Not exactly. When executives at eBay were looking for a new way to highlight their home furnishings category, they turned to renowned interior designers and set them loose on the site. All items in the finished apartment, with a value of about $70,000, will be for sale in the eBay Showhouse Charity Auction from Thursday through Oct. 30. Proceeds will benefit Alpha Workshops, a non-profit design studio that provides work in the decorative arts for artists who have HIV or AIDS.

Remember the pro wrestler who offered, on eBay, to tattoo anything on his face to the highest bidder? He was paid $15,000 to tattoo Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's campaign logo on his face. How does he feel about that now, seeing that the election is over and Romney lost? "Wait, did the election already happen? Did Romney lose?" Eric Hartsburg, of Michigan City, Ind., joked to ABC News, which caught up with him this week. "I am college-educated, and I am not an idiot," Hartsburg said.

By Edited by RedEye staff members (ritaredeye@tribune.com) | January 17, 2003

eBay's auction for Trek Aerospace's flying machine was restarted this week after bogus bids reached $6 million. Now bidders must be pre-approved, but no one has bid higher than the opening price of $50,000.

Somebody out in cyberspace paid a Cape Cod, Mass., man $609 in an eBay auction last week for what he said was a small piece of Plymouth Rock (left). The seller said the rock came from the late lawyer of a geologist who said he got it from a former director of the Pilgrim Society.